ESM Data Archives in times of the Grid -- Distributed archives, databases and data portals: The Scene -- Harvesting of Metadata with Open Access Tools -- Data Discovery: Identifying, Searching and Finding Data -- User Driven Data Access Mechanisms -- Collaborative Climate Community Data and Processing Grid - C3Grid: Workflows for data selection, pre- and post-processing in a distributed environment -- Earth System Grid Federation: Federated and Integrated Climate Data from Multiple Sources -- Future Perspectives.

Collected articles in this series are dedicated to the development and use of software for earth system modelling and aims at bridging the gap between IT solutions and climate science. The particular topic covered in this volume addresses the Grid software which has become an important enabling technology for several national climate community Grids that led to a new dimension of distributed data access and pre- and post-processing capabilities worldwide.